Back on the Airways for the First
Time in 43 YearsPioneering Johns Hopkins TV ProgramTo Make Brief Return
Engagement

The Johns Hopkins Science Review, a pioneering
educational television program that was a surprise hit in
the 1950s, is returning to television for the first time in
43 years later this month, when the Johns Hopkins
University will air four of the original episodes in
successive weeks, beginning Friday, Oct. 31, with an
episode entitled, Profile on Poe.

The programs will air on the ResearchChannel, which is
available on cable and satellite, as well as a live
Internet Webcast. All episodes will air at 8 p.m. EST.

Begun in Baltimore in 1948, the Johns Hopkins
Science Review and related programs were produced by
the Johns Hopkins University for a dozen years and more
than 700 episodes aired live. The show first aired on the
Dumont network and later on ABC. The weekly half-hour show
was the first network program produced by a university and
won numerous awards in its day for presenting educational
content to the public in a smart, entertaining way.

"These programs are a rich legacy of the early days of
television in America," said John Astin, the actor-director
and Johns Hopkins graduate who was a student at Hopkins
when the show was being produced and who appeared on
several episodes as a student actor. For the return of
these four episodes, Astin agreed to introduce each episode
and to offer closing comments about the programs.

"This is just wonderful, wonderful material," Astin
said.

The brainchild of Lynn Poole, the first director of
public relations for Johns Hopkins, the weekly television
show was a testament to Poole's belief that educational
television need not be boring or dumbed down.

A visual person, Poole believed that if you talked
about something, you should be able to show it. In most
cases, Poole brought the actual research scientists before
the cameras to explain the latest breakthroughs and
discoveries.

In the episode on Edgar Allan Poe, viewers are treated
to a critical biography of the dark and brilliant writer,
as well as a survey of his work, complete with dramatic
readings. The episode was hosted by N. Bryllion Fagin, who
had authored a book on Poe. In his introduction of the
show, Astin fondly recalls having taken courses with
Professor Fagin, who died in 1972.

The other episodes to be re-aired are:

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, featuring
the late, legendary Professor Abel Wolman discussing how
apparently useless basic research later leads to amazing
breakthroughs and developments, in an engaging explanation
of the work of a university. It will air on Friday, Nov. 7,
at 8 p.m. EST.

The Master Glass Blower is a show that looks at
the now obsolete role of the glass blower in the research
laboratory and features a master glass blower who worked on
the staff of Johns Hopkins in the 1950s, custom crafting
complicated apparatus for professors. It will air on
Friday, Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. EST.

A Visit to Our Studio takes viewers
behind-the-scenes for a look at just what it took to
produce a national live television show during the height
of the show's popularity. It will air on Friday, Nov. 21,
at 8 p.m. EST.

The programs being aired are videotaped copies of
original 16mm black-and-white films, which were made by
focusing a film camera on a small television screen as the
program went out live. There was no videotape at the time.
Not every Science Review episode was captured on
film; of the hundreds that Johns Hopkins owns, many have
been languishing in boxes for decades and are old and
brittle.

Currently, the university is having all of the
surviving films converted to videotape, in order to
preserve the old programs. As the tapes are being made, a
researcher is viewing the old shows — many for the
first time since they originally aired — and putting
descriptive information about each episode into a database,
which will later be made available on the Internet. The
work is being funded, in part, by a $150,000 National
Endowment for the Humanities grant, and the library needs
to raise at least $75,000 to complete the work. To find out
how to watch ResearchChannel, please go to:
http://www.researchchannel.org/general/ways.html.

To arrange an interview with John Astin, or for more
information about the programs, please contact Glenn Small
at 410-516-7160 or by e-mail at:
media@jhu.edu.

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the
World Wide Web at
http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/
Information on automatic e-mail delivery
of science and medical news releases is available at the
same address.